


Love In Times Of War

by Iverna



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angels and Demons AU, Captain Swan - Freeform, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:35:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26238001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iverna/pseuds/Iverna
Summary: Emma is an angel, Killian is a demon, and they’ve both been around for a long time. Emma has been in love with Killian for a long time, too. Not that she ever planned on telling him that.If only if wasn’t for that letter she wrote a few decades ago... a letter she never sent, but which is now deemed public property.
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan
Comments: 14
Kudos: 129
Collections: Black Swans & Red Hooks, CaptainSwan Supernatural Summer





	Love In Times Of War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liliumweiss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liliumweiss/gifts).



Emma stares at the exhibit, her gut turning to ice. She was so careful. She cleaned up after herself, packed up all her belongings, every time it was time to move. She’s lived all over the world, and she prides herself on leaving no trace.

Except for that time in Portland, but that wasn’t her fault. And Cambridge, but that was understandable, surely. And Dortmund, but hell, there was a _war_.

It’s Dortmund that’s come back to bite her in the ass, and that’s typical, really. Fucking Germany. She never liked the place. The food was good, and there was something to be said for reliable public transport, but—

Not the point.

The point is, someone in this damn museum had the bright idea for a Love In Times Of War exhibit and she’s all about love, she really is, just... other people’s. Not hers.

But there’s her letter, and it’s unmistakably hers, the paper yellowing with age and crumbled and torn, covered in her flowing script. _Dear Killian_...

The arrogance of it, she thinks furiously as she stares at the pages. Typical British colonial arrogance. It isn’t theirs. You can’t just take someone else’s stuff, their private correspondence no less, and put it in a museum. On display for everyone to see. Where the hell did they even get it? Since when were Germany and Britain friends, sharing loot?

Her first thought is to make it disappear, but if she performs another miracle without approval, she might just lose her wings for good. Anyway, taking something from an exhibition about love probably doesn’t qualify as a miracle. Maybe she can steal it, or talk someone into letting her have it...

“So lovely,” someone says next to her. A young woman, standing next to her partner, leaning against him as she reads Emma’s letter and the sign next to it. “And she never sent it. I wonder if he ever knew.”

No, Emma thinks, and her stomach does a complicated kind of somersault. No, Killian never knew, because she didn’t send the damn thing and the war ended and she got over herself and her brief, ridiculous, stupid flight of fancy.

But he might find out, if this damn thing stays here.

The chances are slim, but the thing about demons, Emma has come to find out, is that they tend to be lucky in the worst way. If you don’t want them somewhere, that’s where they’ll turn up.

She has to get rid of that letter.

* * *

She doesn’t get the approval. She can’t tell Upstairs that it’s her letter and therefore incriminating, and even if she could, it’s so old that it wouldn’t point to her. The museum director is less than sympathetic to her, as well, especially since she can’t exactly tell him that it’s her letter.

“Your grandmother’s?” he asks sceptically. “We’re actually quite sure this lady never had any children. Surely they would have claimed it.”

“I meant great-aunt,” Emma says.

His lip twists. “Of course you did.”

Damn it.

* * *

She’s halfway through planning a probably very ill-advised heist when she gets the call she’s been dreading. There’s a knock on her door, and when she opens it, her heart leaps—overboard, apparently, because it sinks immediately afterwards.

The man on the other side of the door is dressed in black—leather jacket, ripped jeans, heavy boots, even his hair is black. He’s got his thumb hooked into his belt and a wide grin on his stupidly handsome face. “Swan.”

“Hook. What d’you want?”

“Oh, nothing.” He shrugs and saunters past her into her apartment.

“Oh, sure, come in,” she calls after him, slamming the door shut.

He turns, all swagger as he keeps walking backwards. “Thank you.”

She mutters a curse and hurries after him.

“You know,” he says, making his way into the living room, “there’s this fascinating exhibit in the museum—Love In Times Of War, I believe they called it.”

And Emma knows. He knows. He’s seen it. He’s read it. And he’s here to gloat about it. She’ll never, ever, live it down.

“Yeah,” she says.

“Fascinating stuff,” he goes on, sitting down on her couch as if she’s invited him. “Though I was particularly taken by this.”

And he pulls out her letter.

Emma scowls at him. Of course he had no problems taking it. Stealing from an exhibition about love—yeah, no problem for a demon. “Hook—”

“Dear Killian,” he reads, and Emma growls and starts for him. Screw the rules, and her wings, and everything. She’s going to punch him in his stupid, smug face—

“Hey, whoah.” He holds out the letter like an offering. “You can have it. I thought you might not want it on display.”

That gives her pause. She takes it, slowly. “Yeah. Not my idea.”

“I thought so.” He smiles. “I did read it, of course.”

“Of course.”

“In my defence, I had no way of knowing what it said,” he says. “Nor that it was from you. But I recognised the hand-writing. And the reference to winning your heart, and all that.”

She glowers at him. “Jerk.”

He glares right back. “Hey, _you_ rejected _me_ , as I recall. Over and over. All while feeling like _this_ ,” he points at the letter, “and, what? I couldn’t know? Can’t have anyone finding out you care for a demon?”

“That’s _not_ it,” she bursts out. She isn’t prejudiced. She just isn’t going to throw herself at someone like him, no matter how infuriatingly attractive he is.

“Centuries,” he shoots back, and he’s on his feet again, all traces of nonchalance gone. “I’ve loved you for centuries, and I never thought you’d feel the same, and now I find out that you _did_. All this time, and you never said a word.”

Emma feels her jaw drop—at the admission, and the easy way he says it, like it’s nothing. Like it’s obvious. “What?”

“ _That_ ,” he says, pointing at the letter in exasperation, “is not Emma Swan with a passing fancy for someone. That means something. Why—” He pauses, takes a breath, his voice starting to crack a little. “Why wouldn’t you _tell_ me?”

She stares at him, and thinks back to that room in Dortmund, when her feelings overwhelmed her and she wrote them out, caught between fury and desperation. She knew she wouldn’t send it even as she wrote it. Part of it was pride—he would gloat, or laugh, and she refused to submit herself to that. But mostly...

She shakes her head. “Honestly? I didn’t think you wanted to hear it.”

“Why the bloody hell not?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Mr I don’t feel anything except fury and vengeance,” she snaps.

He pauses at that, reaches up to scratch at his ear. “Well, all right, but that was... that was a long time ago.”

“And I was supposed to magically know that?” she demands.

“No, but—” He blows out a breath. “No, that’s fair.”

There’s a pause. Then Emma says, “You love me.”

“Aye.” He gives an incredulous laugh, his eyes intense on hers. She’s always liked his eyes. Sometimes she thinks she could read every one of his feelings in them, if she looked long enough. Not that she ever does.

“You never said anything.”

He raises his eyebrows, incredulous. “I said plenty.”

“Not—” She can’t really argue with that. He’s never hidden his interest in her. She just didn’t think it went beyond... well, the carnal side of things.

It occurs to her, very belatedly, that _centuries_ is a little long to lust after one person, if sex was all you were after. Even for a demon. Especially for a demon. It wasn’t like he didn’t have other options.

She doesn’t know what to say. She also doesn’t want to keep arguing, because of all the arguments they’ve had, this might just be the dumbest.

So instead, she crosses the four feet separating them, and drags his mouth to hers for a kiss.

It takes him a moment to respond, but when he does, it’s worth the wait. His lips are soft, gentle but insistent, growing more so when she winds her arms around his neck. He licks along the seam of her lips and she parts them so he can deepen the kiss, his tongue tangling with hers.

“Emma,” he breathes as they part, though not by much, hovering in each other’s space. “That was...”

“Yeah?” There’s a soft smile taking over her face, and there’s nothing she can do about it.

“I didn’t come here to—” He’s breathing faster than usual, and he keeps swaying into her, his hand tracing along the curve of her back. “I just wanted—to talk.”

She laughs then, leaning back so she can look up at him properly, her arms still around his neck. “Worried about your virtue?”

“Bit late for that,” he mutters. “No. But I want to do right by you.”

Ah, yes: his honourable side. The one he keeps insisting he doesn’t have, that rears up at the most inopportune moments and never fails to get him into trouble. Emma grins at him and bats her eyelashes. “So... you want to take it slow.”

He looks at her, really looks, and an answering grin sneaks onto his features. “Hell no.”

She leans closer again. He’s intoxicating this close, warm and solid and smelling of leather and man and, faintly, of fire. “Thought so.”

“Mhmm.” He slants his mouth back over hers, and she loses herself in it, in him. A delicious ache is pulsing low in her belly, between her legs, and she presses closer to him, searching for friction. Angel she might be, but a saint she is not. And he knows it, too, growling in the back of his throat as he tugs her closer still.

They make it to the bedroom in a tangle of shed clothing and heated kisses. Emma lies back on her bed with a sigh of relief—that she’s here, that he’s here, finally. She’s dreamed about this for so long, she scarcely remembers what it was like _not_ to want him. If she’d known how it feels, how he kisses, how his arms feel around her, she thinks she might have sent that letter anyway, risks be damned.

Killian kisses a trail down along her body and kneels between her legs, and she loses track of time and space and everything else except for his lips and that wicked, skilled tongue and the pleasure he stokes, higher and higher. She’s on fire, she’s burning with it, she’s arching her back and bucking her hips and it’s so good, so damn good—

Pleasure crests and breaks and she calls his name as she’s swept up in it. He takes her through it, still kissing, licking, stroking...

When she pulls him on top of her and he sinks into her—finally, _finally_ —she looks into his eyes, and thinks that she was right. She can see every one of his feelings there. Pleasure, and awe, and wonder, and love, and a deep kind of happiness she’s never seen in him before.

Afterwards, when they lie tangled and spent, she trails her fingers over his chest and says, “I love you, too.”

“I know.” He’s grinning.

She pushes onto her elbow and mock-glares at him. “Oh, that’s how it’s gonna be?”

“You wrote it.”

“Yeah. Well. It’s not really fair, you know.”

He’s still grinning. “Would you like me to write you a letter?” he asks. “About all the love I have for you, all the times you rebuffed my advances, the _infuriating_ frustration of falling in love with an angel, of all things, and the way I wished I could stop but never managed to, because the heart wants what it wants?”

Emma doesn’t know what to say to that, except, “No.”

“Because I’ll do it,” he goes on, his grin turning to a softer smile. “We can even put it on display for the public, if you like.”

“It _would_ even things out a bit.”

“Mhmm.” He makes a show of considering it, running his hand along her back again. Her skin tingles where he touches it, a low, gentle echo of the pleasure she knows he can stoke. “Not an exhibit about love, though. I am a demon, after all.”

“Graffiti,” she suggests.

“I like how you think.”

She drops a kiss to his shoulder, marvelling a little at how easy it is. It feels like nothing has changed, and everything has changed; like they’re still them, but better. Like this can work. “You can add that to the list.”

“A letter _and_ a list?” He hugs her a little closer, and she leans into him willingly. “Anything else you desire, while we’re at it?”

“Yeah,” she says, smiling languidly. “You.”

“You’ve got me,” he says, dropping a kiss to her temple. “In all my—how did you put it?--‘infuriatingly handsome’ glory.”

Emma growls, smacks his chest, and pulls away so she can straddle him. “You’re gonna pay for that.”

Killian smirks at her. “Make me.”

“Say please.”

“I don’t— _mhmm_. Yes. Please.”

Yeah, Emma thinks as she leans in to kiss him again. This can definitely work.


End file.
